Why Marketers Need to Become More Vulnerable

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We are told as marketers time and again that in order to truly succeed, we must put our organizations and ourselves in positions where we may fail. However, it’s not the possibility of failure that results in great marketing programs. Instead, it’s the certainty of failure, and frequency of it, that ultimately results in success.

This was one of the major takeaways I gathered while listening to Brené Brown’s keynote at this morning’s “Inbound” conference produced by HubSpot. Brené Brown, Ph.D. is a research professor at the University of Houston and author of several books, including the #1 New York Times Bestseller Daring Greatly. She also gave a TED Talk on vulnerability that is one of the most viewed ever. Her message to marketers, “Every great writer starts with a shitty first draft.”

It’s something we often forget in the face of mounting pressure to convert, to achieve ROI, and to follow the path we know will garner acceptable results. Developing a sturdy foundation for our marketing programs is imperative, but every once in a while, we have to swing for the fences. We have to take a calculated risk without knowing if it will pay off. Doing so allows us to learn and to reset the standard at a higher level. I once heard Jeffrey Hayzlett, the former CMO of the Eastman Kodak Company, speak at another event. He told the story of a campaign Kodak did to sell a new printer that was going to market, and the gist of the campaign went like this:

They created a video advertisement to play in movie theaters around the country that included a code consumers could text to a number in order to receive a coupon for the new product. They rolled this campaign out across the entire country, spending roughly $10 million over a weekend to push it into movie theaters during their busiest days of the week. On Monday, the staff came in and reported that out of all of the impressions they garnered, only two people – TOTAL – had texted the code. The team was up in arms, how could this have happened? One associate raised his hand and said, “When you go into a movie theater, you shut your phone off.”

Seems pretty obvious, right? But no one had thought of it and the campaign flopped. Yes, this was a fairly massive failure, but they learned something important that they would never repeat. Think about what your audience is already doing, not just what you want to make them do.

And here is some even better news: being vulnerable isn’t only a way to grow and learn; it’s a way to engage your consumer base. In fact, consumers, especially on social media platforms, respond exceptionally well to others when they are in a place of vulnerability. You probably have experienced this truth yourself, posting about a failure or obstacle you’ve faced and drawing an enormous amount of engagement from friends, followers, and even complete strangers.

So what does this all mean? It means that it’s not only OK to fail from time to time, but it is practically a prerequisite to doing anything remarkable. Modern marketers have endless tools at their disposal to get things right, and that is what makes marketing more powerful than ever before. But still, at the root of everything we do, human emotion trumps all else. If we can tap into that through our own vulnerability, the sky is the limit.